A SPECTACULAR fireball which lit up skies over New Zealand on Saturday was caused by the remnants of a satellite burning up as it re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere, Russia has confirmed.

The spectacular sight was captured on camera by television cameras which were covering an international cricket match between New Zealand and Sri Lanka in the town of Mount Maunganui, during which a commentator suggested it may have been a meteor shower. However, Russia’s Aerospace Force Command said the Russian Kosmos-2430 military satellite had been “deorbited” on Saturday morning, after which it burned up over the Atlantic ocean, official news agency TASS reported today. Speaking to the New Zealand Herald, Steve Bloor, who saw the event, said: “It looked like a jet plane at first, and I thought I could see that.

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Kosmos-2430 satellite, a part of Russia’s Oko missile attack early warning system, was launched into orbit by the Molniya-M carrier rocket from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in north Russia on October 23, 2007.